The road to hell is paved.

The concept of exceptionalism is a logical fallacy. It relies upon the validity of special pleadings and relativism fallacies to present an argument essentially invalidating (or more rightly redefining) ethics. Ethic is; that I may take no action that others may not also take (in other words, if everybody did as I am proposing (x), would the world be ok). It is the core principle by which the world does not devolve into chaos; and it is one of the most crucial losses of the past century. Ethic rules out modern capitalism; for while I may enjoy the fruits of my labor, as anyone else also may, I may not reason that since given the probability that not all will endeavor to make a profit (some are lazy), I may make a profit. If I do, I have reasoned fallaciously as to my exceptionalism. If all made a profit, we'd have to keep printing money (or various other solutions for "creating" wealth or currency) which would thus decrease the value, and would make it so nobody makes a profit. Therefore it is unethical to make a profit.

Exceptionalism only works at the expense of someone else. Eventually we cause tremendous suffering as a result of our exceptionalism, and we must justify our success in the face of the injustice we have created (and a hundred generations before us). Thus the problem of religion then lies not with God, but with man - for fixed in the soul of man is something transcendent, (call it knowledge of the Holy) but human beings seek to cloud the individual transcendent experience by laying claim to it, and explaining it away, we make all sorts of fantastical stories up to justify our actions to others. This not only employs fallacy, it is Blaspheme.

The argument for why we should ignore the transcendent within, and listen to the voice of others, is that if one does not have a complete grasp on the subject (usually meaning "as complete a grasp as 'I'") that one has not any business grappling with the subject. This is an argument for exceptionalism. Simply because I have a hard time doing differential equations, I am certainly still able to do some mathematics. Further, I am not allowed to indulge in relativist fallacy (claiming exemption from the laws of physics for example) simply because I cannot do the math involved to work out the laws of physics for myself. Gravity holds me down regardless of my minds finitude in expressing it Mathematically. This argument (or series of arguments) is often used in Post modern culture to describe "intellectualism" whereas it is merely drawing a subset of relativist and special pleading fallacies known as elitism. Thus the post modern "redefining of terms" undermines the substance of any thought - which of course is the goal, to be circumlocutory so as to avoid saying anything at all, while appearing deep and thoughtful to the uninitiated.